Cathleen's fingers drummed against the steering wheel, a staccato rhythm that echoed her racing thoughts as she navigated the familiar route to work. The morning sun glared off chrome and glass, but inside her car was a sanctuary of shadowed thoughts.
She swung into her reserved parking spot, the engine's purr dying as she cut the ignition. Her heels clicked with authority across the concrete as she entered the building, the sound a sharp counterpoint to the whispers of betrayal still ringing in her ears.
Settling into the leather chair behind her desk, Cathleen couldn't help but replay the scene from the restaurant in her mind. A smirk crawled across her face, unbidden. Xavier Knight-her husband, the enigma-at the helm of Knight Group International? It made an absurd kind of sense.
She chuckled, the sound hollow in the expanse of her office. Farms? Hardly. Xavier exuded a polished steel presence that spoke of boardrooms, not barns. The scent of money and power clung to him like cologne, a heady mix that had nothing to do with soil or sweat.
Cathleen leaned back, arms crossed. She wasn't surprised he owned the conglomerate; his condescension was too finely honed for someone who hadn't wielded influence like a weapon. His rudeness, the way he carried himself-it all pointed to a man accustomed to being obeyed, challenged by none.
"Rude with an attitude," she muttered, the words tasting like a challenge on her tongue. A smile played on her lips, predatory and knowing. Xavier might be cold and might play his games of dominance and disdain, but Cathleen was no one's pawn. She savored confrontations-the intellectual spar, the battle of wills.
A file landed on her desk, and a whisper of paper broke her reverie. She eyed it warily, the dossier another battlefield awaiting her victory. Xavier may have thought her some high-class harlot, a misconception she'd let him keep for her own reasons, but she was a lawyer-undefeated and unyielding.
Her phone buzzed, and a client on the other end needed her unique brand of salvation. Cathleen answered with cool professionalism, the ice in her voice a stark contrast to the fire in her veins.
"Knight," she said, punctuating the name like a verdict, "will soon learn I'm not so easily bested."
And in that moment, within the hallowed quiet of her office, Cathleen knew the real game had only just begun.
The clock inched towards noon, ticking a metronome to Cathleen's steady breathing as she sifted through the mountainous stacks of legal documents on her desk. The clatter of her phone breaking the cadence was almost unwelcome. She glanced at the caller ID-Dora Jackson-and steeled herself before answering.
"Cathy..."
The name hung in the air, a taunt masquerading as an endearment. Cathleen's grip tightened around the phone, her knuckles blanching.
"Another game," she thought, each word a blade sharpened by years of cunning parries and thrusts with the woman who wore the mask of a mother. Her silence stretched, a battlefield prelude punctuated by the distant hum of the city outside her office window.
There was no love in that one syllable, no genuine warmth. It was a summons, an attempt to draw her into another round of Dora's manipulations. But Cathleen was done being a pawn in anyone's game, even if the player shared her bloodline through marriage.
"Speak," she commanded, her tone icy, betraying none of the warmth Dora's plea for familiarity might have expected. It was a voice that had silenced courtrooms, that spoke of unyielding resolve and battles fought in cold, calculated silence.
The weight of a sigh pressed against Cathleen's chest was a prelude to the words she would have preferred never to utter. She exhaled, the breath slipping past her lips like a quiet surrender, yet her voice left no room for weakness.
"What can I do for you, Dora?" Her question was a sharpened blade, veiled in civility yet poised to draw blood.
In the silence that followed, Cathleen could almost hear the cogs turning in Dora's mind, plotting the next move in their long-standing chess game. The air around her seemed to thicken with tension, each second stretching into eternity as she waited for the reply that would inevitably be laced with honeyed venom.
Cathleen's eyes narrowed slightly, her gaze fixed on the cold cityscape outside her window-a concrete jungle mirroring the harshness she had learned to embody. She braced herself for the onslaught, prepared to parry whatever verbal strike Dora had honed for her today.
Family ties, wrought not from blood but from calculated alliances, pulled taut between them. Love is a weaponized sentiment in Dora's arsenal. Betrayal is the silent undercurrent of their every interaction. These were the motifs that danced around them, a macabre waltz that Cathleen had been forced to learn from a tender age.
She could feel the echo of old wounds, the ghostly fingerprints of manipulation and control, urging her to erect her defenses. The taste of bile tinged her mouth, a reminder of the bitterness that came with Dora's form of affection-a love that hurt, a love that cost.
The phone pressed against Cathleen's ear grew warm, her pulse ticking in her temples like a time bomb set to detonate. Her office, usually a sanctuary of order and steel nerves, now felt like the eye of a storm-deceptively calm before the inevitable chaos.
Dora's voice slithered through the line, a serpentine caress wrapped in faux maternal warmth. "I am still your mother, Cathleen; I raised you with so much love. Anyway, I called to find out if you now know who the owner of Knight Group is."
Cathleen tilted her head, the corners of her mouth lifting into a smirk that didn't quite reach her icy eyes. Her thumb traced the edge of her desk-mahogany, smooth, expensive-the surface as unyielding as her resolve. She had long mastered the art of wearing armor under her skin, a necessity when dealing with Dora.
"Mother," she began, the title loaded with more irony than affection. The word was a polished dagger, ornamental yet deadly in its implication. "Your love has always come with strings attached, each one designed to pull me into your little schemes."
In the pregnant pause that followed, the air in Cathleen's office grew heavy, charged with the electric hum of unsaid words and unspent anger. Her response was a sharpened blade, veiled in civility yet poised to draw blood.
Her finger hovered above the disconnect button, a silent threat. Cathleen's heart drummed a staccato rhythm against her ribcage, but her voice was a cold, unruffled calm-weaponized composure.
"Even if I knew who the owner is," she drawled, each word a deliberate strike. "What makes you think I'll tell you?"
The line crackled with Dora's silence, the void between them stretching taut like a wire primed to snap. This office, her battlefield, bore witness to countless victories. Her chair felt more like a throne, and she sat ensconced within its leather embrace, queenly and untouchable.
"Because," Dora finally hissed, "family shares secrets."
"Family," Cathleen echoed, tasting the bitterness of the word. It was a currency Dora had squandered.
"Blood binds us, Cathy." There was a venomous sweetness in Dora's plea, the kind that rotted teeth and soured souls.
"Blood," Cathleen mused, the word slicing through the lingering stillness, "is easily spilled."
"Is that a threat?" The question was a viper, poised to lunge.
"It's a fact." Cathleen's reply was a fortress, with stone-cold certainty in every syllable.
"Remember your place, child." Dora's admonition was a whip-crack across the miles.
"Remember yours, Dora." The use of her name was a slap; the erasure of the maternal title was a clear line drawn in the sand.
"Without me-" Dora started, but Cathleen cut her off.
"Without you, I have thrived." The words were a clenched fist, knuckles white with truth.
"Ungrateful brat."
"Survivor," Cathleen corrected, a shield raised against the old barbs, now dulled from overuse.
"Always so dramatic!" Dora scoffed, yet the tremor in her voice betrayed a flicker of fear.
"Always so predictable." Cathleen's retort was a mirror, reflecting the patterns of the past.
"Tell me what you know!" Dora demanded, desperation cracking her facade.
"Goodbye, Dora." Cathleen severed the connection with the click of a button, severing the last thread of their toxic bond.
She leaned back, closing her eyes, as the silence reclaimed her space. A sanctuary once again, though the taste of confrontation lingered, heavy on her tongue.